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Handcuffs instead of rings for brides and grooms in Austria

August 10, 2016 - 2:50am

VIENNA — Two couples looking to get married have left an Austrian registry office wearing handcuffs instead of rings.

State broadcaster ORF reports that the registrar in the town of Moedling, south of Vienna, became suspicious because neither of the pairs — a Romanian woman with a Nepalese man and a Hungarian woman with a Tunisian man — could understand each other.

Police determined that the four were seeking bogus marriages that would have given the men a better chance of settling in the EU through wives who come from EU-member nations.

ORF said Wednesday that one of the men was sought by police, but gave no details. None of the four was identified in keeping with Austrian privacy laws.